But
the Daily Californian has now
reported that “Democrats in the state Assembly announced plans Wednesday to
expand funding for the UC system”.The Assembly
Speaker (John Perez) and the Assemblywoman who represents Berkeley (Nancy
Skinner) led the charge to restore funds to the state’s two university systems—UC
and the even larger and more belagured California State University.

In
doing so, progressive Democrats are answering charges that they have been
reticent to use the supermajorities they were awarded by voters in 2012 after
years of Republican Party misrule from its minority perch (empowered by Prop
13).And whether the four years of
student protest are what drove their actions or not, those protests were
critical to reminding Californians and their elected representatives that there
are serious costs to the privatisation of higher education, costs which are
felt by those who represent our state’s future.

Calling
for such funding is significant more for the gesture than for its immediate
impact on students and the state, and more for the momentum it could represent
than for the actual scale of the funds, which are not likely to lead to the
reduction of the sky-high tuition which makes UC public in name only. But
Perez’ belief that this budget is an opportunity to “show some of the key
priorities that will be shaping the discussion” suggests that Democrats realise
how far they have strayed from any sort of commitment to the public good in
recent years.

But
there is one Democrat who will resist the restoration of funding—however small—to
California’s Universities, and he is the one Democrat in a position to halt any
renewed commitment to our public institutions, which serve as the bulwark for California’s
citizenry.

I
speak, of course, of Governor Jerry Brown, who faces re-election in 2014 and is
fond of portraying himself as a Democrat even Republican fundamentalists can
love.Brown has turned himself into the
very embodiment of austerity, and although his long-term design for the
University of California is as opaque as his other policy ambitions or lack
thereof, his short-term goals have tended towards subjecting UC to a punishing
transformation from a citadel of learning into a kind of educational WalMart.

Brown
has insisted on thinking of the University as a market, and if we take him at
his word, he is interested in offering an inferior, devalued product to
squeezed customers.That product will be
offered by an increasingly ill-treated workforce in an increasingly hostile
workplace.

Of
course if we insist on thinking of education as a public good that should be
available to any of California’s citizens who has the desires and
qualifications to attend the University, we would be equally disturbed, because
Brown is demanding that the University abandon the public spirit of its mission
and focus on turning itself into a monetised, instrumentalist institution
wherein the wealthiest students pay whatever the market can squeeze out of them
while other Californians fall between the cracks.

Brown’s
idea of the University does not emerge from any deep consideration.Rather, it comes from the political miscalculation
which he doggedly re-writes as some wacky moral imperative to chop away at
public institutions out of the misplaced belief that the leaner, meaner University of the GOP
fundamentalists’ dreams would be able to do the same job as the well-funded
institution staffed by well-paid faculty and workers and attended by
well-supported students.

Brown’s
high-water mark was probably the 2012 election, where he reaped the electoral fruits
of his austerity drive.But the fact
that just one year after his Proposition 30—which he promised would “fix”
higher education for California—passed, he is threatening “gigantic” tuition
increases is making clear to Californians just how untrustworthy and
uncommitted the Governor is.

In
the Assembly, with the backing of California’s students, progressives are offering
to commit more funds to UC, and Californians should demand a commitment from
that same body to returning UC and CSU over time to their public status by assuming
the funding burden as the representatives of the state’s citizenry.

If
he fails to seize what is certain to be his last opportunity to accomplish
anything significant for California, he might win a hollow election victory
next year by walking some vacuous centrist line.But he will live out his days as Governor as
a marginal, obstructionist figure, intent on holding California back rather
than on allowing our Republic to make good on its obligations to its citizens.

About Me

I am from Northern California, and am the fifth generation of my family to have lived in the Golden State. Now I live next-door in the Silver State, where I research and write about colonialism and decolonization in Africa, teach European, African, environmental, and colonial history, and write this blog, mostly about politics, sometimes about history, and occasionally about travels or research.